When this was first introduced I didn't bother looking at the details. Earlier when I decided to give it a close look I thought hey, this isn't too shabby!

So here's my review of it from a web designer?s perspective. For reference and full sized screenshots, see this thread.

That truncated topic list on the left helps to see the latest active threads. It isn't just vestibule I'm assuming so when I caught something interesting, wherever on IGN, I can just click it and go there instantly.

Board members? Are they necessary? Nope. But it's certainly fun to have there. Who knows is yab is on standby and ready to post smartass reply before you make a thread. And it's basically a new way to stalk someone without opening their post history.

Functionality: We don't have to browse categories to find a board. We can simple search for a board (as long as it works properly).

The topic page? I think layout is fine~ Yes we love our patriotic gray color schemes since it's been here since 9 years ago! But then again we're 9 years passed the 21st century... most web page layouts change for the better in design perspective in aesthetic appeal to mass audience. I know someone created a bluetext Stylish theme similar like that, where the topic list looks beveled, and that was couple of years ago - that guy must've been ahead of his game.

Functionality: Topic background changes to white from light gray when we mouse-over them so it's easier to indicate what are we selecting. Also from that screenshot, it's safe to say we can click anywhere in the div box to enter a thread (without having to click the sentence) - yay for more clickable area.

I'm also digging those new Post New Topic, Create Poll, Sticky, the other icons. That paging browser in top and bottom of the thread list looks fancy, I like. It'll be fun if we can actually drag that little arrow instead of it being just an indicator.

And OMG I'm in the screenshot!

Last but not least, this is the best part of all these: The Thread View.

Let's be honest here. If you're reading this far, have you disagreed with pretty much every single of my points? I thought so. But read on further anyway, please. Losing our traditional gray color scheme isn't that bad! Matter of fact, it looks so much better in white. A guy brought up a point where having white skin in contrast to black text makes our eyes hurt. But here I am, sitting in a school computer lab (when I wrote this) thinking "What the hell, why would it hurt my eyes?" Maybe my monitor at home have different settings than here... perhaps you have too much contrast set in your monitor. So if your eyes are hurt, try to lower it or adjust different settings, yes?

And now icons... Yeah, I get it. You've made hundreds of icons saved in your carlbucket or dozens of MegIcons saved in your Photobucket already and the worst thing comes to mind: You put gray background or that #b1b3bc matte already and didn't save your icons in PSD file. Will it look bad?!? No it will not actually! You can keep your gray background there, or maybe blue background, or even black background just fine! They actually apply border around our icons now so on the plus side: any background wouldn't hurt your icons artistically, and we don't have to worry about having cutoffs in our icons, since it's boxed. Think positive guys, we can't get through this.

And dude... did you see that "say balloon" look for each reply huh? That's so rad! Perhaps it's somewhat inspired by Gaia Online forums, the first place I've seen say balloon were implemented in a message boards. Even cooler, DO YOU SEE THAT NEW QUOTE DESIGN? I can?t get over how beautiful it is. It?s preformatted in light g